David Weidner

I help leaders close the gap between what they've built and what the world understands. Ex @McKinsey, @WSJ, @MarketWatch. Opinions my own and always correct.

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

@GaryMarcus https://t.co/zqgGoVhkMx

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

Ultimately, what’s happening is déjà vu all over again. No, it’s not the printing press, the steam engine, or the railroad. It’s 1929, the dot-com boom and bust, the mortgage crisis, and a little tulip mania all rolled into one.

https://t.co/xM85jVfxTU

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

@jawwwn_ @peterthiel @andrewrsorkin https://t.co/m4grM0oUE6

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

The client meeting where the most important information is transmitted through what the client avoids, deflects, or minimizes — no model trained on text learns that. The senior partner who has sat in a thousand of those meetings does.

Why consulting’s embrace of AI will doom it.

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

@MattHennessey Prince & the Revolution
KC & the Sunshine Band
Chris Stapleton
Jackson Browne
Cat Power
Tony Rice
Public Enemy
John Prine
Morrissey
AC/DC

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

Remember when Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and others told us AI was going to cure cancer and potentially "double" our lifespan?

Yeah, that's not happening.

In fact, since 2022 AI adoption hasn't had a meaningful impact in healthcare. The industry has added 2 million jobs in the last 2+ years. It can't even lay people off with the help of AI.

So, what's the real impact so far? More bills.

Healthcare and AI: It's Getting Worse, Not Better https://t.co/t2VtoWpgMB

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

@InvestingJim @herbgreenberg True. Annoying but true.

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

My discussion with ⁦@herbgreenberg⁩ about how companies are deploying AI, if it makes them good investments, and what it means for the future of work. See more on https://t.co/IRVEQDU6KU

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

A 60-year-old payments company is the most AI-committed among 134 public companies. Its stock is down 8.4%.

That's the inaugural CapitAI Index. Full findings: https://t.co/i1FCsPVYKC

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

Some real-time assholery from the slop machine.

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

Are you embarrassed? You should be.

You've raised millions. Built something real. And your content strategy is SEO keywords and AEO optimization. That's it. That's the plan.

It's like watching someone use a spreadsheet to write a love letter. No one is reading that crap.

And when it actually works? It's worse. Someone clicks through and lands on a pile of AI slop. You've drawn eyeballs to your site and now they feel like they wasted their time (and you've wasted tokens). That's your first impression? That's your brand? Sorry, suckers?

Here's the thing about the founder class. You think in technology. So you message in technology. You throw engineers at what is fundamentally a communications problem. And the content (output) tells on you. It looks like exactly what it is, and that should be embarrassing.

What makes it worse? You're sitting on gold (crypto?). Your platforms generate data that tells real stories — the kind journalists pick up, the kind customers actually care about. You have smart people who could tell those stories well. Instead, you're paying to game an algorithm.

The founders who get this right aren't optimizing for search rankings. They're building authority no algorithm update can touch. SEO has a place. But if your entire message depends on technology to find an audience, you've already admitted it wasn't worth finding on its own.

You know who you are. And so does everyone else.

(and yeah, I used an AI generated image, but you got this far because I know what I'm doing)

[David Weidner @davidweidner]

The best AI investment out there—period.

https://t.co/G98jrcfhqd